Precise positioning of instruments within a closed or semi-closed container is common in many industries. In the field of medicine, health care professionals routinely place instruments within a body (e.g., a human body) to aspirate fluid, obtain tissue biopsies, gain vascular access, place orthopedic hardware, and perform arthroscopies and/or laparoscopies.
These procedures are difficult because the health care professional cannot see the path the instrument tip will take once introduced into the body. As a result, the health care professional must use anatomic landmarks and other contextual cues outside the body to triangulate the precise position of instruments within the body to avoid critical structures and obtain the desired position. Unfortunately, this triangulation skill is difficult to obtain, often requiring repetition through trial and error. Even when this skill is acquired, the procedure can still be extremely difficult when an uncommon or new procedure is performed, when a patient has unusual anatomy, or when a patient is obese. In particular, anatomic landmarks of obese patients are hidden, and their anatomic structures are deeper within the body. Adding to this difficulty is that these procedures are often performed under strict time constraints, and failure can have serious consequences.
Complications during or after these procedures are not uncommon. These complications include, but are not limited to, infection as a result of an inefficiently performed procedure, failure to diagnose as a result of not obtaining diseased tissue during a biopsy, excess bleeding as a result of repeated instrument passes or instrument passes through critical structures, spreading of a tumor as a result of multiple passes through a tissue site, and ill-placed hardware resulting in an unsuccessful procedure.